Will honor post-Sandy fundraising effort at upcoming breakfast

A few local Asbury Park business owners will be honored by the American Red Cross for a fundraising campaign they organized in the days after Hurricane Sandy.

Bret Morgan, 35, Daniel Croak, 35, and Nina Saporta ,29, are the founders of the nonprofit corporation “Cowerks – Restore the Shore.” The three were recently selected by members of the Jersey Shore Chapter of the Red Cross to receive the “Young Entrepreneurial Champions” award at the chapter’s inaugural “Breakfast of Champions” event.

Morgan and Croak are co-founders of Cowerks shared office and meeting space and BandsOnABudget, a merchandising company for musicians that want to market themselves but lack an abundance of funds to do so. Saporta is the marketing director for BandsOnABudget. Both offices are located in the LakeHouse building on Lake Avenue.

A day after Sandy hit, Morgan was able to contact Gregory Edgerton, 30, a graphic designer and owner of Humble Humans digital design company. Edgerton’s office is based out of the Cowerks space. On occasion, he does contract work for Morgan and Croak’s businesses. Morgan threw out the idea of a fundraiser to Edgerton.

“We thought, what do we know best?’ said Morgan.

Their answer came from their work experience at BandsOnABudget — T-shirts and sweatshirt design. Morgan immediately started work to build the site to host a crowd-funded donation effort and Edgerton created the logo for the design. Croak handled the business end to start an application for nonprofit status and they launched two days after the storm.

By the end of the first day’s launch, they raised over $12,000.

“It just completely went viral,” Edgerton said.

Within two weeks after the storm hit, they raised $91,000 through their Cowerks – Restore the Shore donation website. Those that donated received the t-shirts and sweatshirts with their “Cowerks – Restore the Shore” logo on it. All of the money was donated to the Red Cross.

Saporta, who Morgan refers to as the “backbone” of the organization, took care of the order fulfillment system.

“Japan was the furthest we shipped,” said Croak. “It pretty much went all over the world,” he said.

“What an amazing group of guys and one woman,” said Kim Price, major gift associate, events, for the Jersey Shore Chapter of the Red Cross. “They gave us almost $100,000 in just under two weeks after the storm, and it was all volunteer-based work.”

The intent of the breakfast is to honor local people who gave back to the community, and not just financially, according to Price.

Other honorees include Monmouth University for their creation of a shelter to house displaced residents and the founders of Jersey Shore Hurricane News Facebook page for their up-to-date information about recovery efforts and Red Cross donation sites in the wake of the storm.

But, of all the honorees, the Cowerks crew is one of her favorites, she said.

“They put their heads down and just got it done – they are young, they see the big picture,” she said. “Sometimes it seems it always the older generation that gives back, but they took great responsibility to making things happen and I think it is admirable.”

[Photo at top: Gregory Edgerton, Daniel Croak and Brett Morgan stand on the deck outside of their offices located on Lake Avenue.